Farm grows tulips in garage during wintertime

While most Montana farms slow down during the winter months, one Vaughn family is doing the opposite, turning their garage into a full-scale tulip operation to keep locally grown flowers available year-round.

Third Day Family Farms, run by Jason and Virginia Daugherty, grows cut flowers outdoors during the summer months. But once the ground freezes, their focus shifts indoors, where tens of thousands of tulip bulbs are grown under lights inside their garage. Click here to learn more about their summer operation.

“We’ve been growing cut flowers for eight years now, and about four years ago we started our tulip growing in the wintertime,” Virginia explained. “Tulips start blooming about January, all the way through May.”

The winter tulip operation begins in the fall, when bulbs are planted in crates between October and November. Those crates are then stored in a cooler for several weeks before being brought into the garage, where lights and temperature control help trigger blooming on a carefully timed schedule.